Trevor Drury releases Christmas Remake of Elvis’ Blue Christmas

The all new music video for Trevor Drury’s holiday-themed Elvis cover “Blue Christmas” opens with a lone record player and an obscured Drury sitting beside it. He lifts himself from his chair and steps towards the hi-fi, picking up a vintage piece of Elvis vinyl and placing it on the turntable. The record starts to spin and we suddenly fade into darkness, only to be taken to a dreamlike scene that features only Drury, a microphone and a glossy backing track that is refined and yet raw with tonality. Our leading man starts to sing, his eyes scanning his surroundings and the glisten of the silver microphone not unlike the original maestro behind “Blue Christmas” so famously would have some six decades ago.

Music fills the air around us like snow in a furious whiteout, but we aren’t suffocated in the vibrant tonality being piled on top of us. Drury serenades us with an affectionate control over the verses that is mesmerizing and even somewhat hypnotic. The band behind him never tries to edge their way to center stage, preferring instead to let these vocals serve as the crown jewel of the song in every way, shape and form. The video for “Blue Christmas” is admittedly very simple, but the harmony throttling us with its sonic muscularity fused with pastoral pendulousness is anything but pedestrian. In the chorus, Drury’s voice becomes so intense and chock full of rich vitality that he almost drowns out the presence of any additional instrumentation, but nevertheless the mix prevents the melody from becoming too overpowering as we press on.

Even as he plainly stands before the microphone with a look of brooding brilliance, there isn’t any question as to what sort of emotions are swirling around in Drury’s head in this video. His expression says it all; the pain of experiencing another Christmas alone is one that he cannot bear, but the only means of salvaging the season has come down to this single divine expression of solemn loneliness. The vocals reflect the desires that are driving his lyrical execution, and if I hadn’t known better myself (or was perhaps just another young man ignorant of rock music’s storied past) I might have thought that this was a Trevor Drury original.

While he hasn’t recorded enough material to be hailed as the true successor to Elvis’ rock n’ roll throne as of yet, Trevor Drury produces one heck of a pop juggernaut in his cover of “Blue Christmas” and the classy video meant to support its release. Christmas music can be very polarizing for listeners of all backgrounds, mostly because of the nature of the holiday and the sometimes torturous traditions that it entails, but he doesn’t weigh this single down with any of the predictably pompous frills that would typically ruin a cover song of such recognizable stature. A year packed with successes for Drury is capped off with an unforgettable bang in this song, and I for one can’t wait to see what 2019 holds in store for his ever-evolving creative persona.